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Cognitive reappraisal

type: technique · origin: study · evidence: strong · themes: habits and self-control

Claim assessed: Looking differently at an upsetting situation reduces your negative emotions.

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In short

Cognitive reappraisal means changing how you interpret a situation in order to change the emotion it causes. It is one of the most studied strategies for regulating emotions. In experiments, it reduces what you feel, not just what you show. A meta-analysis found a small-to-moderate effect, and a preregistered study of more than 21,000 people in 87 countries found that a few minutes of instruction changes emotions right afterwards. It is not suited to every situation, though.

What it says

Early, not late. James Gross describes emotion as a process that unfolds over time, in which you can step in at several points: at attention, at interpretation or at the response. Reappraisal steps in early, by changing how you interpret the situation. Suppression, that is hiding the emotion, steps in late, at the response.

The first experiment. Gross (1998) showed a disgusting film to 120 participants. Some were asked to think about the film so that they would feel nothing (reappraisal). Others were asked to behave so that someone watching them would not know they were feeling anything (suppression). A third group just watched. Both strategies reduced the facial expression of emotion. Only reappraisal also reduced the disgust people felt. Suppression increased the body’s physiological activation.

What follows. In a 2002 review, Gross sums up the studies so far: reappraisal reduces both the experience and the expression of emotion, with no effect on memory. Suppression only reduces expression, does not reduce the experience, and impairs memory. Gross and John (2003) measured how often people use each strategy in everyday life. Those who reappraise more often reported more positive emotion, better relationships and greater well-being. Those who suppress more often, the reverse. These last results are correlations, not experiments.

The meta-analysis. Webb, Miles and Sheeran (2012) gathered 306 experimental comparisons between emotion regulation strategies. Strategies that change the interpretation had a small-to-moderate effect (d = 0.36). Shifting attention, taken as a whole, had no effect, and modifying the response had a small effect (0.16). The forms of reappraisal mattered too: reinterpreting the situation (0.36) or seeing it from another perspective (0.45) worked better than reinterpreting only your own reaction (0.23).

Emotions in response to ten photos about the pandemic, on a scale from 1 to 5, in the 87-country study. Negative emotions: 2.77 after the reinterpretation instruction, 2.71 after the instruction to look for the good side, 3.29 for those asked to explore their emotions and 3.19 for those given no instructions. Positive emotions: 2.47, 2.62, 1.86 and 1.84. Emotions in response to pandemic photos mean on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely) Negative emotions reappraisal: reinterpreting the situation 2.77 reappraisal: looking for the good side 2.71 control: exploring one's own emotions 3.29 control: no instructions 3.19 Positive emotions reappraisal: reinterpreting the situation 2.47 reappraisal: looking for the good side 2.62 control: exploring one's own emotions 1.86 control: no instructions 1.84 21,644 participants from 87 countries, in 2020
Data from Wang et al. (2021), Table 3: simple means, unadjusted. Each group had more than 5,000 participants.

The 87-country study. Wang et al. (2021) ran a preregistered study, from May to October 2020, with 21,644 participants from 87 countries. Participants were randomly split into four groups:

Then everyone saw ten news photos about the pandemic. Both forms of reappraisal reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions, compared with the two control groups, on all the main measures. For emotions in response to the photos, the effect was d = 0.39 for negative ones and d = 0.59 for positive ones. For emotions about the pandemic in general, the effects were smaller (0.24 and 0.27). For negative emotions in response to the photos, the effect appeared in 33 of the 37 countries with more than 200 participants. The two forms of reappraisal worked about equally well. Reappraisal did not reduce the intention to follow protective measures.

Example

A colleague doesn’t answer your message for a whole day, and you feel ignored. You ask yourself what other explanations there could be: maybe it’s a busy day, maybe they haven’t seen the message. The annoyance drops, and the next day you ask them directly. The example is an illustration, not a study cited here.

How to apply it

The steps below are a practical way of applying it that we propose, based on the cited studies.

  1. Notice the emotion and the situation that set it off. Reappraisal works on the interpretation, so first you need to know what you are interpreting.
  2. Look for another interpretation of the situation. For example, another possible cause, or what someone outside would say. In the meta-analysis, reinterpreting the situation and taking another perspective had the largest effects.
  3. Or look for what good might come of it. In the 87-country study, this version worked as well as reinterpreting.
  4. Don’t just hide the emotion. Looking calm without changing the interpretation reduces the expression, but not what you feel.
  5. Ask yourself whether you can change the situation. If you can, changing the situation may be more useful than changing the interpretation (see the limits below).

Limits and nuances

Sources

See also: Facial feedback